http://watchdog.org/270413/conservatives-climate-change-speech/
By M.D. Kittle | First Amendment Reporter for Watchdog.org
Free-market groups are firing back at Senate Democrats’ coordinated attack on climate-change skeptics, the latest assault on the First Amendment in the left’s relentless effort to intimidate and silence conservative speech.
“We, the undersigned, have long since known that you have a list — an enemies list of intellectual foes you wish to isolate. But our policy differences are not why we write,” states a letter from the 22 free-market organizations to the senators who have spent the last two days calling out “climate-change deniers” on the Senate floor.
“We write today with grave concern over political leadership in a time of deep national division. We write at a time when free speech and association are more important than ever in our national experiment. How will we, together, solve problems if we cannot speak? How can you lead when you refuse to listen?” ask the conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation, theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity,Watchdog.org’s parent organization, is one of the 22 organizations that signed the letter to lawmakers.
CEI has been targeted in a controversial prosecution by a coalition of left-wing state attorneys general, billing itself “AGs United for Clean Power.” CEI and other climate-change agenda skeptics have pushed back.
